Daydreaming...

The Battle of Wills

We opted not to find out with this pregnancy the gender of the baby. And when I say "we", I actually mean "I". Matt was wholeheartedly against gender non-disclosure. I didn't disagree with him, necessarily. I can and have actually made a very strong case over the years for the belief that parents should learn the gender of their baby prenatally. 

I'll admit my motivation was primarily selfish. I just didn't really want to share my pregnancy this time. Leaving some details known to only Heaven above seemed appropriate.

Maybe I'll blog sometime about why I think, in general parents should learn their baby's gender, and the pros and cons of either decision, but I'm not up to it today. It's a hot-button issue, and one that I'd have to address sensitively. People have very strong views one way or the other on this, for some reason. I just don't feel like mustering that kind of tact right now. 

So, for a variety of reasons, we didn't find out this baby's gender

Are you hoping for a girl?

One advantage is that Matt & I have had the entertainment of naming not one, but two babies this time: a boy and a girl, one of whom, will of course, turn out to be imaginary. I'm sure we'll mourn the loss of which ever imaginary child we don't give birth to, and therein lies the converse disadvantage.

But, assuming this baby is another boy, we may never have another chance to name a daughter, even if she does turn out to have existed only in our imaginations.

We already have two boys, and so many people I talk to assume, and quite naturally so, I suppose, that we are hoping for a girl this time. And, I suppose we are. But we are also wholeheartedly hoping for a boy. Since we know I'm not carrying twins, we'll be disappointed and delighted either way.

Only Heaven Knows

Early on, I hoped sincerely for a girl, and prayed for a girl. Then, I seemed to hear God telling me I needed to make peace with having another boy, and then I started to truly want a third boy. Really, when I look at the two absolutely adorable boys I already have, it's impossible for me not to want a third little boy. And then I look at the mountain of little boy toys in my parlor, their bedroom, my waiting room, and my yard, and I break out in a cold sweat at the thought of adding yet more toys (girl toys: barbies, baby dolls, etc.) to the chaos.

So, I spent several weeks expecting a boy, and now I go back and forth; as I said earlier: only Heaven knows.

So, now for your guessing enjoyment, I'll share with you the babies' names in our daydreams. No, I'm not going to tell you the names we have have settled on. I'm going to give you the lists (in alphabetical order) we've considered and let you guess what we've chosen. Feel free to offer your input, knowing we're firmly resolved and it won't make any difference in our choice. Feel free, also to share your own favorites. It's fun to have imaginary babies, after all.

You'll notice our taste tends toward the traditional, familial, and maybe even obscure. Please don't make fun of the choices...they're our real imaginary children, after all.

Also, I would ask, if you DO know the names we have chosen, please do not spoil our fun by disclosing it here in cyberspace. Thank you.

Imaginary Girl Babies

Adelaide, Caroline, Diane, Grace, Lottie, Lucy, Mabel, Nora, Olive, Ruby, Viola, Violet, Zoe

Imaginary Boy Babies

Allen, Charlie, Daniel, Isidore, Isaac, Luke, Nathan, Noah, Oliver, Perry, Theodore, Timothy, Zeke

John's Picks

Donald & Shirley (after we convinced him that you can't name a baby "Grandma Diane")

Corn Fested

Yesterday was a big, giant, exhausting day. Matt & I hauled the boys into town and took part in that great tradition of rural America: the agricultural festival.

Here in Edina, we have the Knox County Corn Festival. And though yields are down and aflatoxin is up, the festivities seemed more festive than ever.

My day started early, as I walked in the annual Jerry Gudehus Memorial 5K. Thanks to the discovery of support hose, a couple weeks ago I decided I was up to running part of the race, perhaps 1/3 of it, even though I hadn't run for a few months. I've still continued a moderate exercise regimen, combined with my normal daily child-packing-and-chasing, so I figured I was up to it. But, a few days ago, I determined that something had changed and I feared running was not a great idea. My hint was the sharp stabbing pains in my lower abdomen that came on after less than two minutes of running. My goal was to start labor, not start a placental abruption.

So, I walked the entire 3.2 miles. Well, all but the last few yards. I ran those when I saw my mother-in-law standing at the finish line with her camera. I thought if I ran at the end and it got captured on camera, I might fool our child someday into thinking Mommy ran a 5K the morning of his or her birth. I did not, however, have a baby yesterday, or even come close. I wasn't really expecting it would happen, but, hey, a girl can dream of spontaneous labor, even after two non-eventfully-induced-labors.

Anyway, the "race" was fun, though not as much fun as running it, but there is next year for that. Plus, I got a t-shirt. The turnout for the race was awesome. It was great to see so many friends and neighbors have engaged in such a healthy habit.

Next was the world's longest parade with about a thousand antique tractors. My boys see tractors, antique and otherwise, everyday, but you wouldn't have known it by their reaction to the parade, particularly that of my younger one. They were impressed, to say the least. The parade was so long that my boys and pretty much all the other kids lost interest in picking up candy. I would have never thought I'd witness such a thing. John told me "Mom, I think I have enough candy now." And Patrick, who has the world's most insatiable sweet tooth decided his bag was full enough too.

I have always kept the existence of carnivals a secret from my boys. But this year, they noticed, as the carnival started setting up on Wednesday night, and we had to walk through it Wednesday and Friday to get into the Fitness Center. John quickly figured out that you could "ride in the machines", so that's what I heard about for three days. So, I told him we'd have to see how many ride tickets we could afford in our Carnival ride budget. Turns out for the bargain price of $25, you can buy 10 tickets, which is just enough to completely wear out 2 little boys (plus their cousin Levi, who had 5 tickets of his own), thanks to generous carnival operators that often let them ride twice for one ticket, and one entirely unsupervised maze/ball pit/tunnel slide attraction that required no tickets whatsoever.

John and Levi had been waiting all morning to ride the swings, but that ride hadn't been in operation, and I was hoping we would run out of tickets before it did because I really didn't think that my Patrick, at just two years of age, really needed to ride it, but I knew I wouldn't convince him otherwise if the big boys rode it. But, sure enough, just in time to use our last ticket, it was ready to go.

The two older boys were standing outside the fence dancing in fever-pitch anticipation of the ride on the "swing machine". I asked PW if he wanted to ride it too. He gave me that emphatic "is-the-Pope-Catholic?" type of yes that he does with a nod, completely nixing the idea of instead taking another turn on the previously-cool-but-suddenly-super-lame fire truck ride. (he uses this sort of "yes" to answer questions like "Do you want to go with Daddy?"; "Do you want a sucker?" "Do you want to read Family Reunion for Old Tractors for the eighteenth time today?")

So, against my better judgment, I relinquished my baby to the care of the carnival operator, who had just told me he didn't actually work for the carnival, was a local and was just filling in, as they were short-handed. (what I heard was he maybe was or maybe wasn't fully up-to-speed on the safety guidelines of the ride). He just asked me, "well, can he hold on?" And I was like, "He's two! Yes, he can, but I don't know if he will." The operator, who really was very, very nice assured me he'd stop the ride if Patrick started crying.

Ok, then, I said, and the ride started. It seemed like the longest 30 minutes of my life. I've never been so concerned for the safety of one of my children as I was then, and remember, I've willingly, even eagerly, consented to having my firstborn operated on surgically and later infused with multiple chemotherapeutic poisons. I suppose it was more like only 3-5 minutes, but it seemed like an eternity to me. But he held on with white knuckles and handled it just fine. When the ride was over, I picked him up and couldn't tell if he was exhausted from the carnival and relaxed from the swinging, or nauseous. We went to the shade of the 4-H pavilion to sit down, and he immediately insisted in laying down in the cool dirt under the table, just like the hogs that wallowed in that same spot during the fair earlier this summer.

After the 5K, the marathon parade, and two hours of carnival, I was ready to do the same thing. Though my feet and legs were swollen and exhausted, my uterus was completely oblivious to the stress, and there was no indication that this baby will ever willingly evacuate my body. Oh, well, the weather was perfect, and we all had a great time. The carnival wasn't nearly as miserable for the parents as I feared it might be, and the lemonade and caramel apples were delicious.

The afternoon ended perfectly when we took the boys to evening Mass and they were really, really good, which doesn't necessarily always happen.

We went back into the festival for supper, and things went south fast. Turns out, we found out just what their level of festival-tolerance is. A scraped elbow was our cue to leave, and we fled before anyone had to make yet another trip to the port-a-potty. It turns out the port-a-potty is a thrill to rival the carnival itself when you are two, four, or five, and I'm terribly afraid we've all contracted hepatitis as a result.

Happy Sunday!